His work didn't reflect the real world as anyone else knew it, or moved through it. Instead, Stanley Kubrick's freakishly controlled, symphonically intense visions of human folly imagined a universe designed for grim laughter at the edge of an abyss. "Star Wars" can have its innocent-looking, Lego-friendly Death Star; across films, continents, even temporal realities, various Kubrick characters shared a Death Stare, that chin-down psychopathic gaze confronting the filmmaker's eerily receptive camera eye. And us, the audience.
Here's the funny thing: In today's world, which many believe to be in pretty shaky and impulsive hands, Kubrick's movies have done more than endure. They've evolved, mysteriously, into a higher species. They're something I never thought I'd associate with Stanley Kubrick. They're reassuring. They know where they're going. They're the work of an obsessive, not an impulsive.
Even the Kubrick films you may admire less than the ones you revere have that awful, gorgeous, wondrous certainty of purpose that says: Here's how I want you to see what I see.
The documentary isn't cosmic in scale, but it's casually profound in its portrait of a demanding artist's humble, increasingly crucial support system. "Filmworker" (4 stars) directed, shot and edited by Tony Zierra, tells the story of Leon Vitali, still very much alive and devoted to his legendary mentor. As a young London actor, Vitali got the role of sallow, justifiably vindictive Lord Bullington, Ryan O'Neal's stepson, in Kubrick's "Barry Lyndon." Vitali was in creative heaven, no matter how many takes Kubrick wanted of O'Neal physically assaulting Vitali in one sequence. He wanted to learn from a master.
He got his chance. Vitali gave up acting to become an assistant, factotum and "slave" ("Full Metal Jacket" star Matthew Modine's word for him) beholden to a highly idiosyncratic and often bullying taskmaster. Vitali and Kubrick worked together for a quarter-century across four films: "Barry Lyndon," "The Shining," "Full Metal Jacket" and "Eyes Wide Shut." Vitali's specific functions were too numerous to track; he cut international trailers for Kubrick's films, he recorded Foley effects, he designed print ads, he conducted casting sessions for "The Shining" in the Tremont Hotel in downtown Chicago.
After Kubrick's death, Vitali sacrificed his health and very nearly his sanity to see "Eyes Wide Shut" through its completion per Kubrick's wishes. At Vitali's lowest ebb during that period, he weighed 65 pounds, worked 24-hour days and, at one point, as we learn in the documentary, he wrote in a journal over and over and over: "I am Leon Vitali, I am healing myself," in a chilling echo of Jack Nicholson at the keyboard in "The Shining."
Vitali remains actively involved in restorations and revivals of Kubrick's work. "You never feel that you've completed the journey, because you're always changing trains," he says early on. It's an apt metaphor for anyone's life, but especially for a life such as his.
The movie's quite clear about Kubrick's worst behavior. "He was always waiting for you to f _ _ up," remembers "Eyes Wide Shut" crew member Lisa Leone. Vitali's amorphous, bloblike job description included housecleaning and cat wrangling; at one point, he installed video monitors in every room of Kubrick's estate, so the director could keep an eye on an aging feline named Jessica. Vitali has lived to tell all about his apprenticeship, and he does so without rancor, or score-settling, or (worse) fawning. "Filmworker" is a first-rate account of the ongoing creative process some call dysfunctional. Well, anyone would call it that, actually. But some would also call it worth it.
In today's commercial cinema we're all kids being shuttled among the Marvel Cinematic Universe, the DC Home for Wayward Superheroes and the national religion known as "Star Wars." Kubrick lived long enough to see it all coming on the horizon, straight on toward morning, just past the monolith.
